A Saint's Damnation
by Gracious Anne
Summary: Josef disappears while helping Mick with a new case. Beth goes looking for him and finds a secret that Mick wishes he could have kept from her. One that threatens to change Beth's feelings about Mick.
1. Night

"Beth."

A voice whispered in the darkness to me. I stumbled inside a doorway in Josef's basement towards the voice. Mick had sent me out of one of the living room in the apartment complex Josef lived in a few floors up, short of breath from running around the main floor to find Josef. I hoped it was Josef. He hadn't answered his cell all day. Usually he would at least give Mick a call back, hours later while I was half-asleep trying to stay on vampire time, with a quip about how Mick never answers _his_ phone.

Mick thought something was wrong. The apartments were too quiet. The evaluator was out as well which was odd. Not that Josef or anyone else needed an elevator in that complex, they were all vampires, but it amused them, the slow lifting box. Mick gave me his set of keys to the car with the mini flashlight on it, after we found out the lights in some of the rooms were out too. Who knew what crazy situation Josef had himself in now, especially in this new case.

With the tiny beam of light from the key flashlight, I tried to fish out the light switch out of the ancient Victorian looking wallpaper. I found it and flipped it, a bright flash of industrial-made lighting consuming my vision for few moments. As my eyes adjusted, I flicked off the flashlight and turned my attention to seeking out the source of the voice. I didn't have to look long.

"Beth, help me." The voice whispered, a little louder and more emphatic.

I edged further into the middle of the room and swiveled on my heels.

It wasn't Josef.

A gasp escaped my lips as I realized who it was.

A woman hung on the wall adjacent to the door on a long wide plank board, held there by heavy, dated chains, rusting and encrusted with blood. Her blood. Under the unforgiving industrial bulbs, the woman looked ghostly, jagged and bent in all the wrong places. Her right eye was black and the skin was swelling. Her hands and wrists were turning a purple hue from the bruises, pinned out and above her head. I think a few of her fingers were broken as well by the way they didn't move.

"Anna?" I whispered. I stood frozen, my mouth agape. She hardly looked like herself pinned there, her dark brown hair wild and her neck and face streaked with sweat. Her breath came in jolts and starts, but she still gave me a small smile through cracked lips. It _was_ Anna. My mind reeled

"Who did this you?" I asked, still frozen in place as if the whole thing would somehow go away if I didn't touch her. I had seen so much blood and dead bodies when I was on the job with Mick that it hardly fazed me now, but this, this was something awful, something new. My rational mind was far off, whispering that I should have never gotten involved. My heart fought for supremacy over my ribcage, pounding at it, telling me to run, get out of there. Something was wrong; something more than Anna's bloodied state, lurching on the edges of my mind's eye.

I launched into action, finally. I stretched out my hands to the cuff on her left hand and shook it, looking for the lock.

"Key is in the corner." Anna whispered, sounding exhausted. Her eyelids fell and she blinked hard. She was going into shock.

I fumbled for my cell in my jean pockets as I walked towards the far corner in the dank room. Only found Mick's keys. I must have dropped it in the dark. Damn, I needed Mick here and fast. Could he hear me if I screamed down here? We must be at least five flights down. There were no windows here either. Josef said he had a bomb bunker, this looked old and spare enough to be a part of it. A medieval torture chamber however, he had failed to mention in his first tour of the complex.

I moved fast over the locks on her hands and feet. As she peeling off the rack she groaned, clutching her side as she half-fell half-slide off the wood. I helped her down as quickly and gently as I could. Anna stumbled into the wall, no help from me. She sank down against it, her hands trembling. I took off my jacket and wrapped it tightly around her waist hoping to keep her upright and stop the flow of blood. Where was Mick?

Her head lolled back again the wall. I had to keep her talking if I wanted to get her out of here alive.

"Anna," I said forcefully hoping my tone would carry the right sense of urgency, "who did this to you?" That wasn't the real question: "who _could _have done this to you?" Bounty hunters were notoriously hard to kill, Anna van Helsing was no exception. I hadn't even seen her get a scratch in all her rough tumbles with vampires on the west coast.

"Josef," she breathed.

I bit my lip. She was lying. I'd seen that small, nearly imperceptible shift of expression when interviewing. Why was she lying about this? Why was she protecting the one who did this to her? Mick had told me not to trust Anna. Maybe this was the reason. That she was dangerous.

Yet, she was starting to pass out, exhausted. Her hands clutched the fabric of her scarf-tie around her neck, in an attempt to stay awake somehow. I bit my tongue trying to think of how to carry her up all those flights of stairs, wishing I had added more upper body strength classes to my regimen. I was going to have to leave there. She was in no good shape, not even to walk after being tied to those boards for hours. I swallowed back the fear that by the time I found Mick, Anna would be gone.

"Anna," I said to her, trying not to let the dry-mouthed fear show in my voice. "Anna, I need you stay awake and don't try to move. I'm going to look for Mick."

"He'll be on the top floor." Anna said, her breath coming a bit slower, smoother now. Maybe she was healing now, like a vampire. I'd never actually asked her whether she was an immortal creature of the night. I just assumed she was invincible as well as insufferable to be around.

I looked at her, confused. But I didn't think it would be good to ask her why she thought Mick would be in Josef's attic right now. I figured it was shock, or some spider sense that Anna had that annoyed Mick so much. She had followed him home once, even after he told her pointblank never to see him again and he traveled through all the underground shortcuts to get there.

Now it all just seemed wrong. Anna was not really Anna right now. She wasn't the girl with thick boots and patchwork jeans, who had turned up at the last crime scene, ignoring Mick's wariness of her. She couldn't be. The woman on the floor of Josef's basement, oozing blood, her body broken wasn't the Anna I knew. With one last glance back at Anna clutching her side, I ran from that room, far too quickly. It all made me remember Josh, blood pouring from his wounds, dying. It brought back my childhood nightmares of Coraline, sentenced to a hellish death, by Mick. I always tried to forget that part, by Mick. Sometimes I could pretend it was someone else who nearly killed his wife, who threw the match and watched her burn, and left Mick the task of saving me.

As I ran, I tried to forget how broken Anna looked, I tried not to feel too sorry for her, as horrible as that sounded. She had been a thorn in all our sides when she came to the city. Anna's claim had intrigued all of us at first, despite the whole tabloid headline appeal of it. Anna van Helsing, huntress, bounty hunter. The last van Helsing alive according to her scatterbrained story. All prime gossip interview material if I still had my old job. Her charm and wickedly sweet smile and her small crossbow were interesting enough to get Mick to look into her past life on the east coast. Her first name had always been Anna, but her last name changed from city to city. She was off-center, a maniac Mick said, conning people into taking her on as a hunter. The only truth in her story was the crossbow. That never changed. And she was an dead-shot.

None of Mick's research explained her surprising strength, resilience, and charm when hunting vampires out stepping their bounds. She never was rash, never too quick, except with the crossbow, which was always lethal, lithe, and at the ready like a detachable appendage at her hip. Silver arrows tipped with something she called Agni, a poison that was like fire in a vampire's dead veins. Something new that could kill vampires from the inside out, an agonizing death.

Anna's claim had been our only case for a while, doing our part of damage control for weeks as she murdered the bad guys for us. Mick was a little put off by that, but he enjoyed a few more quiet moments with me. In way, Anna made our lives easier, and at the same time, harder.

Then just this week a girl died, and Mick leapt at the chance to solve her case with no hints of Anna anywhere near it. The girl hadn't been a vampire. But she had been stabbed through the heart. Mick got Josef to help him track down the killer, but every morning they always came back empty handed. Mick would immediately hit the freezer, not even wanting to say good night to me. Until last night. Josef had been excited about something; in that morbid deadpan he had seemed gleeful as he hovered in the doorway to Mick's apartment, and conveyed cryptically that he needed Mick help him capture the killer.

They left me without so much saying goodbye, saying they (meaning Mick) would call when they found the killer and that I should stay put. I was too close to the police department, or rather I had been, before Josh. I thought my unruly ties with the department might help in the long-run. I tried to get some sleep, wrestling with the pillows and the too-cool sheets for some comfort.

Mick came back to the apartment sometime later in the afternoon. I had overslept. He shook me awake and told me he could not find Josef. I remember not seeing his face, him sort of hiding in the shadows as if he had something to hide from me. A secret.

I ran up as many steps in the stairwell of the apartment complex as I could, knowing the clock was running against me. I looked for my phone on every landing in the stairwell, but no luck. Did I leave it the apartment? Fine time to start losing things. By the third flight I started yelling up the stairs, hoping Mick would finally catch my voice with his superman eardrums.

As I reached the second flight landing, I heard a flutter of fabric and a quick intake of breath behind me.

"Will you stop screaming?" said the voice.

I could almost hear the arrogant smile in his voice. Josef could be infuriating, sometimes, but now I just glad he was here.

"Where have you been?" I said, turning to face, not even trying to hide the fact I was actually happy to see him.

I almost didn't notice his fangs, or his almost animal-like dark eyes. I had gotten used to that look. It surprised me right then though. I think he noticed that and reverted back to his human form.

"What did you do to my elevator?" he said, crossing his arms, eyebrows raised.

"I didn't do anything to it." I said, angrily. Then I said as coldly as I dared, "Anna is in your torture chamber."

Josef's eyes narrowed. He didn't believe me. And he resented me calling whatever he referred the room as a torture chamber.

"Where's Mick?" He asked softly.

"He was looking for to you."

Josef took a deep breath and huffed as he always did. But anxiety, a curious expression on _his_ face, was planted solidly there even so.

I felt a slight breeze next to my hand, and he was gone. He had gone to get Anna. I hoped.

I continued up the stairs, slower now, keeping an eye out for my cell as I ascended to the top floor. Everything was quiet. Unnaturally quiet. I was about to call Mick again, when I heard scuffling through the door.

I ran forward catching the door handle with the heel of my left palm in my hurry and I burst through it. The room was one of Josef's hidden unfurnished studies. Books lay in thoughtful even stacks along the walls, waiting for shelves to be put up. A few naked light bulbs light the room.

Mick was inside, lying on his back, staring aimlessly at one of the bulbs. A wooden stake stuck out of his chest, like he was a lollipop or a skewered fruit. It took a moment for me to remember he was only paralyzed, not dead. It still terrified me.I ran to pull it out. He looked at me with unstaring eyes, his expression blank. I carefully pressed my left knee into his chest and wrapped both my hands around the stake. It was deeper set then the first one I had pulled out of him those few months ago. Whoever did this was strong. Another vampire maybe? I pulled it out with a sickening squelch. Mick gasped for air beneath me and I threw the bloody thing aside.

"Are you okay?" I asked, wrapping my hands around his head, pulling him close, not caring about getting blood on my clothes, his dead blood.

"I'm fine."

He coughed into my chest.

He didn't sound fine. His voice was distant somehow.

We helped each other get up and he eased himself to the wall, still weak. The hole in his chest wasn't healing as quickly as it should. He groaned as his shoulders met the wall.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

Mick shook his head; sweaty, shaggy locks fell in front of his face. He placed a useless hand over the hole. It looked somehow worse than before.

"Did you find Josef?" He asked, breathlessly.

"He found me," I said, "on the stairs. " I hesitated.

"He getting Anna right now," I continued, watching him for a look of surprise that never came. Only resignation was there. "She was tortured in a room in the basement. -Mick gave me a sharp look, nostrils flared. -She's lost blood and she's pretty beaten up."

Mick didn't say anything. We didn't speak. He groaned again a moment later, clutching at the hole. He went down then, slumping against the clattering piles of books, a first edition of something by Kafka cracking against his head as it fell.

"What's wrong?" I asked, holding my hands out to help him up. Instead, he lay there.

"She did something," Mick choked. A horrible thought grabbed my heart and pulled it.

I took two steps and reached down for the stake, and scanned it for signs...signs of anything.

A gold-like hue showed through Mick's blood on the tip.

_Agni. _

Anna's fire poison.

The door flew open and there she was suddenly, all breath, heat, and blood. Anna. Josef was behind her like Mercury, his fangs out and his eyes once again dark. Anna lunged towards Mick. A wild light was in her eyes, twin fires burning with hatred and loathing.

How was she moving so fast? Even beaten, her black eye clearly pronounced now, she moved with extraordinary speed. Josef growled a warning at her as he thrust himself between her and Mick. She ignored him. He went for her legs as she tried to leap above him to get to Mick.

I pinned myself in the corner farthest away from them, looking for an opportunity to get Mick out of there.

Something flew towards me as Josef and Anna continued to scuffle, little gods or birds fighting over a dead mate. Anna's crossbow. The weapon lay on the floor at my feet, an arrow hanging off it. I had no time to think of where she had hid it or how she had found it again after being tortured. I stared it at disbelieving that her most precious object could be detached from Anna so easily as a few grabs and scraps with a single vampire. Josef must be a better fighter than I thought.

I picked up the crossbow and held it stupidly in my arms for split second before taking action. I've fired a gun before, but a bow? I think I took archery at summer camp _once, _years ago. The crossbow was heavier than I thought, despite its size. I fumbled, trying to figure out the right way to handle it. It took several tries to draw back the trigger but I got it. Anna was much stronger than I was.

I finally could see why she liked this archaic weapon. She liked the adrenaline rush, the feeling of power you get looking down its narrow line of sight. I took in the scene before me.

Mick lay on the floor, prostrate towards the door, Agni poison running through his veins. He was dying. Slowly, like those murdering wretches Anna had killed last week. Josef and Anna were still at it, wrestling, clawing each other. For some reason Josef wasn't trying to hurt her. He was only trying to capture her arms in a vice like grip, to stop her momentum. He didn't seem to be worried about his self-preservation at the moment. Anna, even with her wounds, was still trying to claw the vampire's eyes out.

I yelled at them, crossbow at attention. Anna stopped long enough to notice I had it, and then Josef grabbed her shoulder and head in a vice like grip and squeezed. Anna stopped struggling, frozen, tense, watching what I'd do, what Josef would do. In the tiny room, I might hit her, but imagining one her own arrows ripping through Anna's body and burying itself into the wall at that force was not something I thought of lightly.

I couldn't shoot her, not even with Mick now writhing in pain on the floor. Tears began to stream down my face.

"Anna, you need to stop this." I said, gritting my teeth. "Give me the antidote."

Anna always kept a vial of Agni antidote in on her somewhere Mick and I had learned in our research. She kept it with her in the extreme case that she hurt someone who was not a vampire, or a vampire she would rather see alive a little longer for more information.

Her breath sounded like an old woman's ragged wheeze. She shook her head at me. Josef squeezed her shoulder. I leveled the crossbow at her head, warningly. She hissed out a breath and whispered:

"_He_ did this to me."

I blinked back my tears, feeling numbness crawling into my bones. She meant Mick. She meant Mick had chained her, tortured her in secret. I could have laughed if weren't so horrible. She couldn't be talking about Mick, the one lying on the floor, his back arched in pain… not _my_ Mick.

I looked him, expecting him to defend himself, or scoff half-heartedly as his body suddenly froze, free from trembling with fire in his veins. I expected grim lines of resignation to explaining later what went wrong this time, maybe a hint of anger in his eyes. Instead, his face fell as I stared at him, wanting his silent, unnecessary promise, that he didn't torture Anna.

He looked away. Ashamed.

Mick had hurt Anna. My mind reeled.

No, my mind screamed, _no_, not my Mick. She was lying. She had to be.

I lowered the crossbow a few inches.

I looked at Josef, afraid even to look back at Mick. His face was stone. Josef was trying to keep his anger from showing but it bled through. Mick had done it alone.

Anna began to soften, crumple in Josef's grip.

I raised the crossbow again, taking a few steps her. I could taste the salt in my tears.

"The antidote," I whispered, suddenly feeling numb.

Josef let her reach into her shirt pocket and Anna trembling, slowly withdrew a vial of what looked like tiny specks of gravel. She put it in my waiting hand. I thrust it into Mick's warm hands, not quite throwing it at him, not trusting myself to look into his face. He took it and swallowed the gray stuff down. I let go of the crossbow and let it tumble to the floor. I heard his breathing instantly slow and the scuffle of his feet on the faded red carpet behind me.

Anna fell against Josef then, and began to sob. Josef held her, awkwardly. Maybe she was crazy, but nothing she ever did, would justify this.

"You killed a little girl." It was Mick behind me.

Silence filled the library.

"She was nine. She was _human_."

Anna did not answer, she sobbed louder.

"Her parents are probably dead by now," echoed Josef quietly, sighing.

They were talking about the case. The case we had gotten a week ago with the dead little girl. The case that had started their rampage through the night in order to find the killer and had put her parents in the hospital. Then the parents had disappeared, kidnapped. It was all about Anna. Mick had tortured her for the antidote, and for the kidnapped parents' location. I realized then the crossbow, the only thing the woman was afraid, was probably a murder weapon now. The arrow half cocked on the bow was tipped with gold.

"They had taken the cure," Anna breathed, wiping away her tears. "They had murdered hundreds of people. And you wanted me to just leave them be?"

Josef and Mick eyes' met. Josef brow darkened. He would not forget this lightly, as it should be. But they exchanged looks, coming to some sort of understanding. A truce for now.

Mick didn't look at me as he scooped up the crossbow and broke it into pieces. As if, that action was his atonement somehow. I slipped down the wall in a puddle of books and watched Josef try to comfort Anna in his own way, suddenly soft and gentle. He held her hands in his, pinning her again him as she held her finger bones snapped themselves back whole. He refused to look at Mick. Mick slumped against the wall, staring at the pieces of the bow and arrow now shattered. He would not meet my gaze locked on his, pleading with him to see that I was ready to forgive him, even now. There we all sat, waiting until dawn, where matters would, of course _they_ _had to,_ become clear and all the night's damning actions pass away.

* * *

**A/N I've been thinking about this for a while, and I don't know if this is a one-shot or something could be longer. **

**What you do think?  
**


	2. Morning

Josef bleached the torture chamber clean in the morning. He didn't let Mick help him, though Mick did try, but after a heated 10 second staring match, Mick didn't push the subject. I've never seen Josef look so upset. He flew up and down the floors with abandon, little keepsakes and pieces of art crashing in his wake. Some of them were priceless -centuries old and more fragile than a strand of hair. I tried to save a few, busy myself with a hot glue gun and a few pieces of invisible tape while trying to ignore Anna sitting in the main living room, staring at the opposite wall.

Her body had healed by now, not as fast as a vampire would, but quick enough that one knew that she wasn't quite human. It was a bit unnerving. I knew I should've gone to her, sat with her, held her hand like a sane, good person. But I was not sane, good, or even decent then. I needed to be selfish, self-serving for once. I was bone tired ready to crash on couch and just sleep all the adrenaline and stress away. Yet, I knew if I tried to sleep, she would invade my dreams. I would imagine her screams, her pleads for mercy after hours of torture at the hands of the man I loved. Thought I loved.

After trying to put an ancient bowl back together in any form or fashion, my hands sticky and burned with hot glue, I finally gave up and left the pieces on the marble counter top. I took a deep breath and joined Anna on the couch. I decided it was better than sitting on one of the chairs. I wasn't that cold. I still felt uncomfortable though, sitting almost right next to her and I edged towards the end of the couch. The leather squeaked ominously loud in the silence.

I didn't feel like talking, but I cleared my throat. Anna hadn't moved at all. She didn't even look like she was breathing. _Could_ she breath?

"Would you like some tea?" I asked, trying hopelessly to install normalcy to this morning. I didn't glance at her directly, more at her knees and her now unbroken hands. Her fingernails were still a light shade of blue, I realized. The only physical remainder of what had happened to her.

"I don't like tea," she answered, hoarsely after a moment.

I tried to think of something else to offer her, before the silence could trap us again, she said louder:

"But I wouldn't mind some coffee."

Coffee. Yes, Josef should have some in those empty cupboards. I darted up off the couch and nearly ran into the kitchen, grateful, to go investigate.

There almost nothing in the cupboards. Josef had gotten lazy about keeping human food in the house when he had so few visitors now of that kind now. Trying to lie low after the bomb attack. I did however find a few canisters of coffee not expired yet.

Anna got up and stood by the edge of the counter and joined me in watching the coffee drip and then slowly pour and drip intermittently again.

"Fickle thing isn't it?" Anna said, softly. Her version of small talk, maybe. I stole a glance at her. Her eyes were soft from crying, zoned on the coffee pot. The coffeemaker decided to pour a little more, then drip.

"I suppose so," I mumbled.

Then we were silent. Silent as I poured her and I coffee into the only two clean mugs, silent as we went back into the living room and that awful squeaking leather couch, and silent as she took a few sips.

Then she began to talk, whisper things-old memories, pieces of her past.

"I'm older than any of them you know," she said.

I didn't acknowledge her, I just sipped more of the bad coffee. I wasn't sure she wanted me to.

"I pretend like I'm not. Like I'm normal somehow, but I've seen more lifetimes than even Josef. Too much more. –she took a tiny sip of coffee and continued—"I've hunted the kings of their world. Beaten them into dust. Burned them alive. Cut their un-beating hearts out and watch them crawl. They were monsters. "

She took a shaky breath, bowed her head as if acknowledging some unknown thing in the room.

"I'm not immortal, Beth, if that's what you wondering. My time will run out, eventually."

She stared at me now, and all my preconceived notions of what even a half immortal woman was, disappeared. Here was someone broken, not by some ungodly force in one blow, but by the last straw, fragile and positioned just right. I couldn't meet that stare, not quite. I stared at her hands and thought of Mick, breaking them with that lightning force that had saved me, time and time again. I remembered the look on his face when Anna had revealed the truth. His eyes full of guilt, near breaking point. It was then I realized Mick not be all to blame. Not really. For the bluish shine of her nails yes, for the memories, the nightmares of a vampire slamming his fist a thousand times harder than an abusive husband or any mugger into her face, yes, but not for this. Not for this quiet moment of brokenness shared between us. Their world had broke us, split us up inside, leaving us venerable to their shadows, their charms. Coraline had broken me in a way.

"Mick's not a monster, Beth," I heard her say, but I don't hear the words until a minute later, when I realize she's still staring at me, with eyes older, wiser and more fickle than anyone I had ever known. And yet, still not old enough understand how I felt.

"Define monster," I said bitterly, and drank the dregs of my coffee. A shadow shifted to my left in and out of my peripheral vision.

Mick.

Monster, savior, the man I loved? I didn't know now.

I heard Josef in the kitchen, turn on the faucet washing his hands, finished with his OCD bout of cleaning, purging what little of the physical reminder of what Mick did that he could. He came into the living room, and very carefully, stiffly even, sat down. His fangs were still out, his eyes still bright and the irises too small to be considered human. He was still upset.

"Josef," Anna said gently, shifting forward.

Josef slowly met her gaze, his fangs retracting and his human face sliding back into place. He pursed his lips.

"You've already forgiven him," he spat out.

"No," Anna said, "I'll never forgive him for what he did, but I've come to peace with it."

"You're too quick to become neutral in this."

"You're too quick to judge him."

Josef was on his feet, his hands balled into fists.

"I just cleaned your blood off the floor," he said, his voice on edge, "and you are telling me not judge him?"

"I'm asking you to stop kicking your own pompous self-righteousness around as if it had _any _weight and sit down."

Josef sat back down and after a moment, rubbed his eyes.

Though the blinds were closed and the windows tinted, I could still tell that midday was coming upon us soon.

A shadow flickered in the corner of the living room and I turned my head, knowing I was following Mick's departure from the apartment.

I turned back to watch Josef let his head rest against the pristine sofa seat and close his eyes, exhausted. He didn't even try to sleep in the freezer.

I held Anna's hand until she at last, fell asleep too.

* * *

**Thank you to the people who enjoyed the first part enough to want another chapter and tell me so. **

**I think I might have a plot in the works, so thank you for the encouragement! It helps**.


	3. Midday

The police had ultimately never found the little girl's body. The parents either. Anna had hid them well. They left the murder as an open case, although a few of the older officers raised a few eyebrows when Mick gave up on the case a few weeks after the night I found Anna. He never had left a case alone before not unless there was some proof that evidence could not be found or had been buried beyond his reach. This time, however, his heart simply wasn't in it. He knew who the killer was, and he had nearly murdered her already.

I hadn't Mick for several weeks after that night. I didn't feel ready to talk to him. I knew it must be have broke him, that last piece of human consciousness roaring inside him as he tried to break Anna. Whoever it had been trying to tear Anna apart, maybe for all the right reasons, was not my Mick. Not my Mick.

The problem was I didn't know whether he was my Mick anymore. I saw the way Josef had reacted to him using his house, his territory as a secret torture chamber. Mick didn't have his trust anymore. Josef did not trust lightly. How was I supposed to trust Mick now when even his best friend the one who would die for him, would not trust him to set foot in Los Angeles again. Underneath all that selfishness, he had a loyalty beyond imagining. Josef was still loyal to Mick, would still meet him, offer him a glass of wine or one of his willing human girls, but he did not trust Mick to set foot in his territory again. Which meant Mick was banned. Banned from Los Angeles. I didn't exactly understand why or how his own kin could do that to him, but they did, and it had been several weeks since I seen him. It felt like months.

I tried sleeping in my own apartment. Didn't work. I ended up walking the streets at night, wondering if he'd smell me, hear me from miles upon miles away. It was stupid, dangerous even. But somehow, I felt Josef hadn't let me walk home much less anywhere alone. I feel someone, not human, watching me.

I broke into Mick's apartment after another week had passed no word or clue from Anna, or Josef. I could sleep there, curled up in the spare bed upstairs. I'd watch my phone on the nightstand, sometimes, wishing he would just call. He wouldn't have to say anything. I could just listen to his silence, and know that he was still here, that he wanted to make amends.

Forgiveness. It's what he wanted. A tiny piece of humanity from me. Anna in her own way had already forgiven him. She was at peace about it. Her wounds were healed within days, and the streets were back to whispering of the nightmare that hunted down the cold-blooded creatures of the night. I couldn't understand how she could just shake off what he did to her that quickly, until, once when I could no longer sleep in Mick's spare bed, watching the night sky turn to dawn, that Anna was only moving on because that was the only way she could cope. Stopping, even for a day could break her. She only hunted murderers, those with no heart. Mick had had a heart we thought. We all thought he was one of the best. Maybe it was still. Maybe one day he would regain our faith. My faith.

At last I could not stand it. I went out to search for Anna. She would know where Mick was. Josef wouldn't tell me, not in a million years, not now when he was eradicating his complex of the smell of torture, the smell of Mick.

When I finally found her, I was covered in mud. It had been several slow weeks, and then suddenly I was chasing a van Helsing huntress down some path to what looked like an old sewer. The mud was a dirty but almost welcome change. It fit since I felt like dirt.

She looked worn, her features sharply outlined in the dim light. 

"You shouldn't have come here," she said, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"I know," I said. I clenched my fists together, mud squelching between them. Anna had just staked a dubious looking young vampire. He lay paralyzed two feet away from where I stood. I could feel his eyes on me. Anna was knee-deep in her workday already it seemed. It wasn't even 3 a.m. yet.

"I haven't heard anything Beth. He's banned from the city. He could be in Europe for all I know."

I bit my lip. That's what I thought. No help from Anna either. I couldn't believe he'd go that far. He wasn't the one to run away from pain. Of any kind. Even heartbreak.

"Where was he last," I asked softly.

Anna sighed. She wasn't happy.

"He was last seen in San Francisco. You could try there, but I'd doubt you'll find him. Vampires with a ban don't stay in one place for too long. Their reputations are a bit tainted." She trudged through the puddles and mud with ungodly gracious ease and tore her stake out of the vampire's chest. She said something in his ear, something that sounded terrifying. Something in another language. One meant to wake the dead.

The vampire's eyes widened in fear and he very slowly got up and ran from there into the night.

"What did you tell him?" I asked, fully expecting some vague answer.

"Leave Los Angeles or die slowly."

"Oh," I replied, wondering how one kills a vampire slowly. Maybe heartbreak was one of them. I decided I really didn't want to know.

I turned to go, but Anna caught my arm. I wanted to wrench it out of her grasp, but doing that would probably dislocate my shoulder, or worse.

"Be careful," she said. My lip curled at her words, unconsciously. I didn't need to hear that from her. She's the one who got hurt. She's the one who is supposed to be the victim.

I had to find him. I had to make him see I still cared, and maybe that I still even loved him. I left him a text every day now. The same thing:

_Mick, come home. Where are you?_

I just hoped, I didn't have to jump off the red bridge to get his attention.


	4. Noon

I went back to my apartment, dog-tired but elated at a possible direction. I packed my car with an overnight bag full of random necessities that looked useful and took off towards san Francisco. The trip blurred in my memory, into the lines on the asphalt. I could not decide whether it would be harder to try and sleep in the back of my car for a few hours, or to not find Mick as quickly as I could. I made it to the city limits, before I knew I would fall asleep at the wheel if I kept going. I pulled into a rest stop, quiet, dark, and strangely peaceful.

I tucked my knees under my chin in the short backseat, and fell asleep, comforted that I was parked nearer the trees rather than the glaring light.

Perhaps that was my mistake.

I awoke to the gentle rumble and jostle of my car, speeding down the highway. I jolted awake and sat up, my hair wild, my legs stiff and sore from being in that position for so long. I blinked slowly, I couldn't seem to find my voice. A long dark haired head bobbed in time to some jazzy swing music in the driver's seat.

I knew that head. Those thick dark curls.

Coraline. The one who kidnapped me, the one who nearly turned me into what Mick is. Coraline was driving my car.

"Hello Beth, nice to see you awake," she said, slow easy jesting smile appearing in my rearview mirror.

A vampire's smile.

"Better put on your seat belt, I wouldn't want to get pulled over."

My heart pounded, adrenaline rushing through my veins. I wanted to run, to grab the door handle and leap out of the car. However, we were going, oh, 90 miles an hour down the highway circling San Francisco, and that would have been suicide.

"How did you find me?" I asked, realizing suddenly that I had been clenching my teeth.

I could feel that old fear bursting through the surface, bringing back those old memories, of almost being made an immortal plaything, a vampire child. Eternally naive.

"I was in the area," she said, in such a way it made me shiver.

"You were looking for me?"

"In a way," she said, speeding up to a dangerous 95, "I _was_ looking for Mick.—her lips curled-But then, I smelt you. You are quite attached to him aren't you?"

I strapped my seat belt on, the resounding click an ambiguous statement of _it's complicated._

I tried to put on a blank look but it didn't work. Anna still saw the flicker of agony in my eyes.

"Still not exactly his then?" Said Coraline in a whisper.

I hesitated, but Coraline's hypnotic stare tugged at me, willing me to answer. To answer truthfully. "I don't know," I said, swallowing the last of my bleary sleepiness.

She crossed three lanes with ridiculous ease, and then slowed down to a boring 80 miles per hour or so. I took a shaky breath.

" Where are we going?"

"To my brother's place." The youngest of seven, I remembered.

"Somewhere with a bathroom I hope?" I asked, catching my awful reflection in the rearview mirror.

"Better than that. A place with a view. You won't miss it."

I scoffed at that. I shouldn't have. Coraline gave me a dark and not all together amused look. One that meant I would pay for that later. I decided it would be better to be silent than to let Coraline pick my brain and heart to pieces as she drove my car with abandon towards San Francisco. We nearly drove off a cliff in the end, but she pulled the car to rather dramatic stop. I was not as amazed as I was about that was I was when she took out a blindfold.

"Really?"

"I could blind you myself," she said sweetly. The woman _would _hold a grudge against me. Where on earth was Mick? She wrapped the blindfold around my head, tightly, and stroked my hair before suddenly pulling me close to her.

"Don't even think of taking it off Beth."

I swallowed.

Then I was led down stairs, deep underground it felt, by the strange stuffy feeling, underneath the cliffs. For what felt like hours, I was squeezed into a tight corridor, dirt in my hair, and a smell that made my nose wrinkle.

Coraline then made me climb up what felt like rocky ledges, a steep cliffside even, to the concrete paths to its entrance for that. She was right. No one visiting San Francisco could miss it. Then she tore the blindfold off, and I blinked uncontrollably as I tried to adjust to the light. She shoved me upwards. I stepped in a room, bare and dark as before. I knew that smell. I had smelt it before. Once. When I had been San Francisco on vacation. That time it had been fun, an adventure in not getting sea –sick if even that.

I knew that smell.

It smelt like Alcatraz. The Rock. It had that awful despair about it. That useless laziness that hung in the air.

"Come along, Beth. I have a proposal for you."

Whatever could she have for me?

A proposal to be turned?

A proposal to find Mick?

Where was I?

My heart sunk. I was trapped, definitely. With vampires, with Coraline. If I wasn't so tired I would have tried to shove her into a wall out of pure frustration, but at the moment, I was too tired, too unclean with a mound of dirt on my head to notice anything but….but the trial of blood going out of the dimly lit entrance into the prison's basement. I couldn't even see Coraline in the shadows just ahead of me.

-I sent up a silent prayer that Josef had gone overprotective and had a scout on me. Only him or Mick could get me out of here. Undead or rather Alive. I preferred alive.

"Uncomfortable?" asked a voice behind me.

I turned and screamed.

_That _was not Coraline.


	5. Storm Clouds Rising

**A/N Short chapter sorry. More to come very soon. I'm a bit nervous about Jonathan. First impressions of him anyone?  
**

* * *

As I stumbled backwards away from the man, materializing out of the shadows behind me my first thought was:_ his eyes. _My god, his eyes. Blood-shot, worn. He looked like he was been strung through a ringer, his once probably clean suit speckled with blood and dirt, his hands caked with dried mud. He raised an eyebrow at me, mouth slightly open.

_Mick?_

"Scream any louder and the human guards will know the exact location of your heart," he said, a low note of warning in his voice. He took a step closer towards me.

His eyes were soft-green, his hair a rumpled mess of ginger. Not Mick.

I glanced towards the entrance and the smell of what I thought could be a prison. Coraline had disappeared. Convenient timing for her.

I didn't know whether to be relieved or afraid that she wasn't here. Was I their appetizer tonight or something else? I shuddered to think what the something _else_ could be.

He towered over me. The lanky man with bloodshot eyes certainly seemed like a vampire. Although, he looked a little disheveled. I decided to take the initiative. I held my ground and stood up straight, and stared him down. He stopped, blinking.

"Where am I?" I asked, not letting my voice shake. There was still dirt in my hair. I could only hope that his loyalties lay with Coraline and her clan. I wasn't about to get sucked dry by some soft-green eyed vampire.

"The fortress Duvall," he said dryly. "It seems she's lost none of her old world style." -He wiped his hands ineffectively on his pant legs—"and I believe they are having dinner." He smiled wickedly at me when he said the word dinner. I balked at him. He smiled even more, showing his teeth.

I turned back towards the entrance. Coraline stood there.

"So nice of you to join us, Jonathan."

"My lady," he replied, and bowed, a mocking bob towards the dusty floor. More dirt fell out of his hair.

The edge of Coraline's lip curled. He pleased her. So much the better, anything to keep her eye off me, I thought.

My legs shook imperceptibly to the human eye, but with Jonathan and Coraline they picked on it right away. I was exhausted. Jonathan took hold of my arm after I tried feebly to struggle, like a moth against a solid oak door.

I was shoved into a wide-open room, sunlight dancing through the leaves outside the high barred windows: a forest, quiet and impenetrable. No one to hear any screams.

I was right about it being a prison. Pits lined the floor in quick secession with thick iron hatches. They were empty now, but I could guess how many years and how long there had been occupants by the sheer stench.

I sidestepped them all, carefully, as I was half-pushed, half-led through that maze. A table, heavy wood of some kind, was set for four on the other end.

The man named Jonathan, now impatient, dragged my cautious human feet and me across the rest of the way to it and sat me down roughly in a chair. There was not much on the table but a couple of wine glasses, a fork, and a blunt butter knife.

Jonathan and Coraline took their seats and sat silent, waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for the right moment to kill me? I knew they would be asking me about Mick, Josef, about the vampires of Los Angeles, maybe even about Anna. I had to come up with an answer to satisfy them, but I couldn't think of anything but the truth that would. They had their own way of getting the truth from me. Centuries of hearing lies would see through my petty attempts to distance myself from their world and their battles. I was caught up in it, with or without Mick.

Then suddenly a man seemed to materialize, dramatically for my benefit, in the chair beside me. It was Lance.

I cursed underneath my breath.


End file.
